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Nokia Brings BBM to Handsets, Debuts Affordable Smartphones: MWC

At Mobile World Congress, the company announced BlackBerry Messenger will be available on the Nokia X family of devices in addition to Windows Phone.

Nokia unveiled five affordable handsets including a new family of smartphones debuting on the Nokia X software platform at the Mobile World Congress convention in Barcelona, Spain, based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

The launch builds on Nokia's concentration in delivering innovation to more price points with its family of Lumia smartphones, and the latest momentum for Windows Phone, though none of the handsets announced are slated for launch in North America.

The company also announced BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), the mobile messaging platform, will be available on the Nokia X family of devices in addition to Windows Phone.

"BBM continues to provide a best-in-class mobile messaging platform with productivity, collaboration and community-building as cornerstones," David Proulx, senior director of BBM at BlackBerry, said in a statement. "We continue to see great enthusiasm for the BBM experience around the globe and we are thrilled to work with Nokia to preload BBM on devices beginning with Nokia X in select markets. We welcome Nokia X users to the BBM community."

Further reading

Adobe's Photoshop Express app, already available on Windows 8, is coming to Windows Phone later this year to allow consumers to edit easily across Windows PCs, tablets and smartphones.

The Nokia X, X+ and XL are priced to target the affordable smartphone market and provide an on-ramp to Lumia and Microsoft services like Skype, OneDrive and Outlook.com.

The Asha 230 is Nokia's most affordable full-touch Asha device to date, priced at about $62. Additionally, the 220 is an Internet-ready mobile phone with social apps, priced at only $40.

The first device, the Nokia X, comes with a 4-inch in plane switching (IPS) capacitive display and 3MP camera. The Nokia X+ is optimized for multimedia enthusiasts, who can access games, music, photos and video thanks to more memory and storage.

Both the Nokia X and Nokia X+ will be available in bright green, bright red, cyan, yellow, black and white. The third family member, the Nokia XL, boasts a 5-inch display with 2MP front-facing camera, making it well-suited for Skype video calls and a 5MP rear-facing, auto-focus camera with flash.

The entire Nokia X family is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor and supports Dual SIM, letting people switch SIM cards to get better rates.

Adding to the popular Asha range of devices, the Asha 230 includes all the benefits of the Asha software platform, including Fastlane and access to social apps like Line, WeChat and WhatsApp.

One swipe up from the lock screen activates the Nokia Asha 230's camera, and one touch enables people to share images to social networks. With a forthcoming software update, the Asha 230 will introduce 7GB of free cloud storage on Microsoft OneDrive, and the option to automatically back up photos to the cloud.

Finally, the 220 offers a 2.4-inch color screen, dust- and splash-proof keypad, with Facebook and Twitter preloaded and Bing as the default search engine in the preloaded Nokia Xpress browser. It will be available for sale in single and dual SIM variants and rolling-out, like the rest of the lineup, in Asia-Pacific, Europe, India, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.